


let me be yours

by jolie_unfiltrd



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But They Get Over It Pretty Quickly, F/M, Fluff, Marshmallow Levels of Fluff, Post-Hogwarts, Rituals, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Unacknowledged Love For A Hot Minute, more like, seriously so fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:53:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolie_unfiltrd/pseuds/jolie_unfiltrd
Summary: In an effort to keep Harry from returning to Privet Drive, two eleven-year-olds find themselves on the Quidditch pitch late one night, ashes on their fingertips and blood at their clasped palms.It takes some years for the consequences to come to fruition.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 45
Kudos: 362





	let me be yours

_I won't let you go back there_ , she thinks furiously after Harry tells her about his life at Privet Drive - and she finds that it's all she can think about all week long. It circles in her mind like a train, insistent and pressing and demanding all of her time. By the time Friday evening has rolled around, she isn't surprised when she finds herself determined to find answers instead of more questions. 

(Harry is eleven, which means he has already spent ten too many years with that dreadful family. She couldn't bear for him to spend a moment more with them).

So, she heads to the library - a rather characteristic Hermione move, even then, at the beginning - but then, surreptitiously, she chooses a table near the Restricted Section, on a hunch. Bonding magic tends to be temperamental, and all of the books she'd been looking at had been hidden from view which meant, of course, they were "off-limits."

Hermione, despite being rather a teacher's pet and a rule-lover, by definition, did not happen to be much of a rule _follower_ , if she did not believe the rules were well-intended. Surely, most first-years shouldn't be allowed in the Restricted Section - who knows what sort of havoc they could wreak? - but she was responsible. She had a good _reason_ to be there. A very good reason, if she did say so herself.

(Years later, Draco Malfoy would lament to her over three glasses of eggnog in the back of Molly Weasley's annual Christmas soiree that she really ought to have been in Slytherin, for all her devious little plans and justifications and ambition, and Hermione, two glasses deep, will stop in her tracks and not have a single reason why he was wrong).

Three books, four anthologies, and one rather fascinating but unfortunately slightly off-topic research journal later - she has found it.

Or, at least, she's found something.

Hermione leans in and feels her hair fall around her shoulders like a shroud as she peers closely at the small font - no wonder so many wizards need glasses, honestly. She reads the ritual once, twice, and then a third time before allowing herself a small moment of muted victory. This is _it._ She's almost completely sure of it (a few of the runes aren't quite familiar, so she'll need to check them, but it seems almost completely what she's looking for: a bond that will supersede the protection of all others).

She stands to rush back to the dorm and present it to Harry right away, but pauses, and slumps in her chair. She's not even sure he will agree to be bound to her. Why would he? His second best-friend, his bushy bookworm of a classmate... Hermione deflates. 

Perhaps it isn't the best idea, after all.

Still, she dutifully copies the ritual and the runes, annotated with the appropriate translations, naturally, and tucks it into her bookbag, before trudging back to Gryffindor tower, resolved not to bring it up to Harry. Not yet, at least. She ought to check the runes.

But when she slips into the tower, decorated to the gills with boughs of holly and mistletoe (which she carefully avoids) and lights wrapped around buxom Christmas trees that hardly leave room for anything else, Harry is sitting in front of the fire, alone and looking miserable.

She weaves among the holly and trees and sits beside him, not close enough that he will startle, but just that he will feel her warmth. "Alright, Harry?"

"Yeah," he says, in a way that says no, of course I'm not fine but please don't call me out on it. "Just thinking about this summer, when I'll have to go home."

"What if -" and the words slip out of her before she can rein them in, before she can take a moment and _think -_ "what if you didn't have to?"

Harry looks over his shoulder at her, eyebrows spiked under his unruly hair. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I might have found something."

"Found something," he repeats.

"In the library."

"In the _library_."

Hermione dares to glance up at his face, worried that he will be angry or frustrated, but it's so much worse: hope is blooming across his face, cheerful and optimistic and light in a way that she's never seen him.

"What did you find?"

"A... well, it's a bonding ritual." Harry's eyes narrow, and she rushes to explain what she knows.

"I need to check some of the rune translations that I've done, to make sure that they're correct" - Harry gives her a baleful stare, and she shrugs lightly as if to say that even she isn't perfect, though she is fairly certain they are, in fact, correct - "but essentially, I believe it would create a bond that would supersede the bond that keeps you tied to Privet Drive."

(She cannot even say the name of that wretched family, that would dare treat him in such a way - and though many would protest because he is Harry Potter, she is infuriated because he is _Harry_ ).

"Supersede?"

"Be more important than."

(Dumbledore would have thought this was impossible – that the protection sealed by the love from Lily Potter nee Evans would have been passed through the blood of her sister, but the protection was forged in love, and there was no love at Privet Drive for Harry Potter. Not one iota).

(There is love with Hermione, though. Fledgling and bound by friendship, but stronger than anything else she's felt before).

He hums thoughtfully and looks again towards the fire. "It would be with you?"

"I - well, that's what I had - of course, it can be Ron, if you'd prefer-"

A half-smile crosses his face, and he nudges his shoulder into Hermione's suddenly prim stance. "No, it should be with you."

For a reason she can't explain, his smile prompts a smile of her own, a cascade of warmth and emotions that were altogether warm and fuzzy. She blames it on their proximity to the fire, and doesn't indulge her thoughts for a moment longer. 

For a reason she can't explain, doing this bonding ritual between the two of them felt right – and she is inclined, now, to trust that feeling. Which is peculiar for at least one reason: Hermione Granger did not, as a rule, make decisions based on feelings, or gut feelings, or anything stemming from her heart instead of her head. Logic, reason, rules.

(But – but, it feels right, she will whisper to herself, long after Harry wishes her goodnight and she remains, staring into the fire, baffled by her own quiet confession).

They decide on just a few nights later, under the full moon.

Harry meets her down in the abandoned common room, only the softly glowing embers in the fireplace giving them any light, and ushers her under the Invisibility Cloak. On any other night, it would feel strange to be without Ron, somber in the absence of their friend - but there is a joy in her steps and a brightness in his face that leads them straight into laughter, into feeling mischievous and silly and almost child-like.

They sneak down onto the Quidditch Pitch, grateful for warm socks and warming charms and thick cloaks.

Hermione lays out the ingredients - the ash from a burnt pine tree in the Forbidden Forest, and a slim knife - and turns to Harry, suddenly solemn as they kneel together in the wet grass, knee to knee. 

She swipes the ash across his forehead, and he across hers, and though she is blinking through the darkness, she can tell they have started to, well, glow.

Or at least, luminesce slightly.

She understood the runes, though they were years ahead of her coursework, and her wandwork was nothing less than precise at all times. 

(There had been some musings in Ancient Runes about how wandwork was less about precision and more about passion, about feeling and intuition, but Hermione, being someone who repressed her gut feelings until they no longer felt like they were going to swallow her whole, had always erred on the side of precise, calculated movements designed for the optimal result). 

They murmur the incantation once, twice, being extra careful on the pronunciation, as they slice carefully down the inside of their left palms. Hermione winces as the blood drips onto her cloak. The words seem to come more naturally, now, and the wind swirls around them in a gentle care.

Harry reaches out his palm for hers, eyes fixed on her with an intensity she's never seen before, and she smiles softly at him as she places her hand firmly within his grasp.

They inhale sharply as the bond snaps into place. It feels as though a band of pure magic - like being awash in a wave of sparks - has tightened around her rib cage and she can _feel_ it happen to Harry as well.

The wind dies down and the incantation has stopped but they are still kneeling on the grass, staring at each other, cognizant that something is different, that something has been changed irrevocably, but they're not quite sure what it is, or if the other feels it too.

"I think we did it," Harry says, finally, triumphantly.

"I think so," she agrees, breathless at the look in his eyes: hope again, so much of it that it threatens to overwhelm her.

-

They have a chance to test their fledgling bond over Christmas holidays, as Harry quietly boards the train alongside Hermione and feels himself growing lighter and lighter with each minute. Hermione searches for her parents as they exit the train, bags in tow, and waves enthusiastically as she spots them, as she drags Harry over towards the pair and throws herself into their arms.

Mr. and Dr. Granger are quiet, petite people with kind smiles and warm eyes that widen in surprise when Hermione explains, rather hurriedly, that hello, this is Harry, yes, he's going to stay with us over the holidays, isn't that wonderful? They turn to each other, communicate in a quick glance and then Mr. Granger grabs the boy’s trunk and the group of them head for the car.

Harry is so ecstatic he can hardy breathe; Hermione feels as though his enthusiasm is contagious. She opens the window and laughs at the way the wind tangles her hair; Harry looks at her as if she's the sun and all the stars.

Mr. and Dr. Granger glance at the children in their rear-view mirror and exchange a knowing smile.

(Harry’s presence was never truly monitored at the Dursley’s, so he is not missed; Mrs. Figg simply assumes that Dumbledore has chosen to keep him at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore assumes that Mrs. Figg isn’t updating him because all is fine, and Aunt Marge is never enlarged, and Dementors never come after Dudley, and all is well and all is quiet and no one notices that Harry is coming back fed and clothed properly and with a smile on his face because that’s the way it should have been, all along).

-

Aside from the bond, things at Hogwarts pass roughly as they were meant to - basilisks and secret chamber, tournaments and dragons, near death and near misses until Hermione is sure that her adrenaline receptors are completely exhausted by the age of 17.

Some things, however, are changed.

There is a curious tugging under her breastbone when she is away from Harry, when he is in danger, when he is lost, and at the Triwizard Tournament, she gasps in the moment before he comes back, and Ron looks at her oddly but is distracted by Harry, sobbing over Cedric's body on the sand in front of them. It doesn't occur to him to look back at Hermione, to see the mirrored tracks of tears. 

When he has nightmares, she wakes, panting, and wants to rush to him - but he is fifteen and defensive and doesn't want to need anyone, especially not her, especially not someone who knows him so well, especially someone who could see through the walls that he's put up, that could break them down in a moment.

When Ron leaves and she stays, it is the easiest decision she's made in years. It is not, really, actually, a decision at all. Where Harry goes, she will follow - and the betrayed look on Ron's face is replaced by one that is calculating, one that is adding up all the decisions she has made throughout the years. It is not that she loves him less, but that she loved Harry first and better and in a different way and Ron will never, ever be able to measure up to a decision made in the middle of the night seven years ago.

She wants to feel guilty but can't, wants to think of Ginny and Ron and to follow the path they'd thought they ought to, but she doesn't. She _can't._ She can only see how much Harry is suffering, how much he is lost and feels alone.

Hermione pulls him into an embrace, tucking her forehead into his neck and wrapping her arms around his waist and breathing in the very scent of him, the one that had meant comfort and home for years, and feels the tugging under her breastbone cement into a reverberation of sound, of magic, of light.

Harry inhales sharply, and that is how she knows he feels it too, and for the first time in almost seven years, she wonders what, exactly, they got themselves into.

When she is tortured at Malfoy Manor, she can't hear him screaming, but Harry completely loses his voice by the time they arrive at Shell Cottage, and Ron is looking at him with curious eyes, as the dark-haired man carries his best friend in his arms and refuses to let her go.

When he disappears into the forest without a word, Hermione is filled with such a fury that a burst of accidental magic, the magic she has kept careful control of for years and years, knocks over a column onto Greyback and several of his followers, leaving Lavender with scars and emotional trauma but the breath in her chest remains. One of the Death Eaters would have killed Fred, another Remus and Tonks - and so her magic saves many, though she'll never know that, and she will only hear the crunch of skulls and ribs beneath the stone columns in her nightmares for years. 

Perhaps it is no surprise that the two of them ignore the bond, after the war. Ignore the pull they feel to be closer, the lure and allure and the desire just to be _close_. They try to date other people, to flirt with others, but they always end up in the library at Grimmauld Place, sipping on tea laced with whiskey and leaning, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the fire.

Healing from the aftermath of the war is more difficult for them than they anticipated. They thought it would taste like joy, like triumph, like victory – but they still have nightmares, they have trouble sleeping, they drink a little too much some nights, in an effort to forget.

It didn’t feel like healing to watch the reunions of everyone else – the Weasleys, gathered together in an auburn mass, clutching onto each other and laughing and crying, or Remus and Tonks, cradled around their son as he learns to talk, or the families that found each other over the next months.

All the family that they had was each other. Hermione wasn’t sure the obliviation could ever be reversed on her parents, wasn’t sure if she trusted peace enough to try, quite yet. Harry had come back to life to find it more painful than he remembered, pressured to be a man and a leader in a world where he had already won, had already died for them, wasn’t that enough?

They were both exhausted to the bone, and so it is no surprise that the bond is not their most pressing concern.

Not, at least, until Hermione braves Gringotts once more.

-

The last thing Hermione Granger expects when she steps back into Gringotts, more than a year after she'd freed a dragon from its depths, is a smile from the goblins at the front. The smiles are slightly eerie, revealing pointed teeth in a way that felt more like a grimace than a smile, but what surprises her further are the words that spill from the center goblin's mouth.

"Congratulations, Hermione Granger." Holdclaw gestures for her to follow him into the hallways behind the towering desks, into a private room. 

"Congratulations?" she replies in a puzzled tone, heels clicking on the marble floor as she follows the short-statured but quick-paced goblin into the room. Clad in traditional wizarding style, she shrugs off her cape as she takes a seat across from him. 

"On your nuptials."

Hermione prides herself on her ability to keep cool in the face of uncertain situations, but though she had been prepared for death and deathly risks and stupid decisions, she had not been prepared, in the slightest, for those words.

"I - there must be some mistake, I'm not married."

Holdclaw raises an eyebrow and slowly pulls out a large tome from the bookshelf behind the table, opening it and carefully flipping through the pages until he came upon the Potter family tree. She feels rather certain he's moving at his current pace purely for dramatic effect, and restrains herself, with a significant effort, from drumming her fingertips on the table impatiently. 

At the bottom of the page, clear as day, Hermione can see her name set in pretty, intricate script next to Harry's, with a solid line between them.

"So, as I said, congratulations on your nuptials, Lady Potter."

Hermione exits Gringotts in a daze, a certified letter from the goblins clutched within her palm. The fluttering rhythm of her heart can be ignored, but the consequences of their past actions could not.

_Oh, Harry, what have we done? What have I done?_

-

As luck would have it, Harry is gone that day from Grimmauld Place – he’d set off that morning to visit little Teddy, insisting that yes, of course, a one-year old can definitely steer a toy broom – and so Hermione sets the letter on the coffee table in the library and stares at it, as if it will disappear or catch fire if she takes her eyes from it for one moment.

Of course, she can only sit for so long. Sitting turns into standing, drinking a mug of warm chamomile tea in an effort to calm down, which turns into pacing circles in the expansive kitchen and down the hallway and back into the library once more, which turns into Kreacher begging her to sit down and eat something before she passes out.

Taken aback by his kind request, by the way he calls her Mistress – how had she not noticed that, in the last year? How had she assumed it was some part of wizarding culture she didn’t understand? – she slumps into the chair, and dutifully eats the pot pie that he has prepared, staring at the elf with new eyes as he cleans the kitchen and bows gracefully before disappearing.

She retreats to the comfort of the library.

The letter remains on the table, gold seal shining dully in the hazy light of the afternoon.

Hermione makes herself another mug of tea, pouring a liberal splash of whiskey into this one, and settles down at the couch once more, to wait. 

Harry returns through the Floo, still laughing at something the toddler yelled at him, and halts upon the sight in front of him: the letter, the wary look in her eyes, and the way her hair has grown to at least thrice the volume that he remembered from this morning.

“Everything alright, Hermione?”

She jumps at the sound of his voice, splashing cold tea across her blouse and hardly noticing – and it is then that he realizes the look in her eyes is not one he’s seen before, that it is not caution, or weariness, or joy, but overwhelming guilt.

“What happened?”

Tears well in her eyes and she chokes out, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” as he sits down in the chair next to her, rubbing a soothing hand across her back, thinking that this explains the growing sense of unease he’d had all day, even though he was happy and Teddy was safe and everything was alright. Their emotions had been in tune almost as long as he can remember, ever since that night on the quidditch pitch – he’d long since grown used to her presence in his mind.

“What’s in the letter?” he asks, noticing its prominent display on the otherwise barren table.

She lets out a tearful sniff. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.” She pushes it towards him. “Just open it.”

Harry opens the letter, brow furrowed in concern, and reads it. Once, twice, three times. Finally, he sets the letter down and rubs his hands across his face, before looking sideways at his best friend, eyes bright and unworried. 

“I’d wondered why Kreacher was so nice to you,” he says, wryly.

Hermione snorts. “You know, that didn’t occur to me until today. He saw me crying and made me lunch.”

“Are there leftovers?” Harry perks up slightly at Hermione’s vague gesture towards the icebox that served as their refrigerator, and generally only stored leftover takeout and butterbeer – but decides he ought to stay at her side, for now. Especially now that she is looking at him like that, brown eyes wide and afraid. “What is it?”

“This is all my fault,” she confesses, holding out her hands in supplication. “If I hadn’t found the rite –“

“I would have stayed with the Dursleys each summer instead of with my best friend,” he says, firmly.

“But I should have known – I should have read more –“

“Hermione.” He takes her hand in his and begins to stroke circles on the back. “It’s not your fault. We were kids, trying to solve adult problems. If you haven’t noticed, it’s a specialty of ours.” A wry smile crosses his face.

“But if I had known we’d be – be married – “ The tears begin to flow anew, and if he didn’t know his best friend so well, if her emotions didn’t flow into him readily and without compunction, he may be more concerned. She wasn’t upset they were married, necessarily – he set that thought aside to consider later – but that she thought she’d tricked him into it, somehow, taken away his choice of marrying anyone else.

(The letter was quite clear on the nature of their particular bond. Divorce wouldn’t be an option for them, not really).

“You didn’t know,” he murmurs, pulling her into his arms and letting her cry, rubbing her back softy as they processed the shock together. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“I should have known,” she insists, stubbornly.

Harry takes a moment to consider that. “Would you have done anything differently?”

She starts, indignant, and pulls back from him, ready to protest, but it dies on her lips. “I would have tried to find another way,” she begins, hesitant.

“And if you couldn’t find one?”

Hermione looks up at him, helpless, hands on his shoulders as she shakes her head. “I would have done it. I would have never let you go back to them, no matter if – no matter what.”

A genuine smile spreads across Harry’s face. This is the Hermione he knows, determined, cunning, and willing to go the ends of the earth for him – over and over again, just as he is for her. He can feel the emotions swelling in her, so he leans in and kisses her forehead.

It shocks her, as he knew it would.

(They had always been close, but physical affection had been limited – first, Ron was jealous for reasons they didn’t understand, and then others wouldn’t quite be able to understand why the casual touching was so comforting, so after a short period in their first and second years, they’d tried to keep their distance.

But now – in the home they've come to share, in the place that they retreat to, with the person they understand and who understands them, there’s no reason to hold back.

No reason, of course, except for themselves).

Harry leans back and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “So,” he muses. “Lady Potter, hmmm?”

It takes a moment for her to relax into him, but she does, she always does. “Who knew you had such a fancy title, Lord Potter?”

He snorts, she laughs, and some normalcy returns, once more.

"Oh, Harry," she says, nestling into him with a sigh. "What are we going to do?"

Harry's fingertips trace circles around the top of her shoulder as he thinks for a moment. "Well, I reckon we should throw a party."

"A party?" Hermione sounds outraged at the suggestion, though she doesn't move from his side.

He shrugs and shoots her a sideways, sheepish grin. "Seems like the easiest way to tell everyone we accidentally got married when we were eleven."

"Well - I mean, it's not like we're _married_ married..." Hermione trails off uncertainly. 

"So eloquent," he teases, before he turns to her, tone serious. "Wait, what?"

"Didn't you read the goblin's letter?" A pale pink stain has begun to stain her freckled cheeks, and she won't quite look him in the eyes.

"Yes?"

"It's a bond but it's not - if we don't -" She inhales sharply and looks down at her hands, resorting to her clinical tone. "A bond must be consummated to be permanent."

"So," he pauses, tilting his head thoughtfully, "if we don't shag -"

"Harry!" she smacks his shoulder.

"- then we're not married?" He has to clarify, has to make sure he knows what the next step is - because he wants her, desperately, and has for years, though the timing was never quite right, even though the bond they shared was the most important, sacred thing he knows. But he needs to know what she wants, because he won't jeopardize this, not for anything. 

"Correct," she says, as she sinks back into his embrace but with a slight degree of separation, as if she is afraid he won't want to take that final step, to shag (as he so eloquently put it) his best friend, the bookworm, the swot, the know-it-all. She's afraid, too, of how much she does want that, to cross the final threshold with him. 

They fall silent, for a moment, each remembering a different moment, a different almost, a different not-quite-the-right-time.

Harry takes a deep breath and turns to face his best friend, the girl who has always been there for him, the girl whose emotions have been as easy to read as his own and suddenly, now, all he can feel is a mix of anguish and desperate hope and he can't tell who they belong to. "Hermione," he murmurs, reaching a tentative hand to brush a loose curl back from her face. "Can I try something?"

She looks up at him through her lashes, amber eyes wide and hands nervously knotted together in her lap, nodding her assent.

He doesn't have far to lean in, but he moves slowly, aware that this is new territory, even for them. They had kissed before. Generally, they were rushed, urgent events, in the face of certain or near-certain death. Quick embraces, bruising kisses on cheeks, on temples, hands fisting tightly in the back of shirts - and then they were over.

Hermione's gaze darts to his lips and her breath quickens, eyes fluttering closed as he presses his lips softly, tenderly, against her own. She also intends for this to be a sweet, innocent first kiss; she intends to be slow and tender and calm and -

it is none of those things.

That first kiss (which nearly sets them aflame) evolves quickly into several kisses, pressed up the column of her throat as Harry hauls her into his lap, burying a hand in her curls and tracing his tongue along her collarbone. Hermione finds her hands are suddenly occupied with trying to divest him of his shirt, though the feel of his hot breath against her ear is enough to drive her to distraction, and the way it feels to straddle him, to press her heat up against his hard cock - it is - it is -

overwhelming and all-consuming and hot and greedy and the clock chiming in the corridor prompts them to spring apart like two guilty teenagers.

Hermione lifts a hand to touch her lips, Harry runs his hands through his messy hair abashedly, and they both start to grin, outrageously. Wide, expansive, open grins. 

The bond ignites and flashes gold between them, and though Hermione will want to thoroughly investigate that phenomenon later (and will have the opportunity to do so shortly), at the moment she has only one concern.

She shimmies out of her skirt and blouse and races to the doorway that leads upstairs, pausing only to flash a come-hither look over her shoulder, a look he had imagined a thousand times but oh, the reality was so much better.

"Are you coming, Lord Potter?"

Harry stands at the bottom of the stairs, speechless and rumpled and so in love with his witch he feels as though he is going mad.

A dark, lacy bra was tossed down the stairs, jostling him out of his reverie, and he darted around the corner to begin taking the stairs, two at a time, only to encounter his wife ( _wife)_ draped becomingly on his bed, bare to the world and bared to him and with a mischievous look in her eyes.

"Lady Potter," he nearly growled, yanking his shirt over his head, "you first."

\---

They decide to throw a party, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! I'm toying with different styles (and finally writing for fandoms I've read in for years and years) and couldn't resist this little ficlet bouncing around in my head.


End file.
